>>5519958 >>5520015 >>5525072Some food and can of RC later, and you're back in your basement. Without any real system in mind, you start poring through the boxes. You figure that if they're not sorted, you'll start making piles, and if they are, then you'll just figure what's in each and then put it all back in.
Golf clubs and equipment. Basic tools and things for repairs. Locks. A lot of locks. Several musty boxes of trivia books. Several boxes of what you can only describe as "weird things" that were probably used in those so-called rituals and spills. All vestiges of a life once lived, telling you quite a lot about the man who once lived here, but not quite the whole story. What you see is the surface.
Box after box, you grow closer to the end of your task. Everything seems more or less sorted, thankfully. You're just learning the system. After removing a third sweater with the local football team's logo on it, you think of something and glance at the device. <span class="mu-g">5 minutes, 23 seconds remaining.</span>
That's about it then. Guess you'll put everything back and wait. You can't help but feel nervous about whatever's going to happen, given that you were asleep when you came here. No choice but to wait and hope for the best though.
You stand on your front lawn, near the road, waiting to go back. A thick fog in the distance obscures your vision, although you can't make out much with just this red moonlight anyways. Just torched houses and that blood vessel buried in the middle of the street. Cold air bites against the skin, and the smell of ashes wafts over from the other side of the street. You take a deep breath.
<span class="mu-g">5...4...3...2...1</span>
You wanted to catch sight of what happened, but instead you don't even process anything happening. One moment you're standing by the street, and the next you're lying in bed. You sit back and glance through the curtains behind you. The moon is still up, but it's not red anymore. It's just a normal moon. And there's no fog, no anything- just a normal August night outside. Everything's gone, just like a dream. It feels surreal. Almost as surreal as what you saw over there, in fact.
You blankly poke around the house and discover some good news, and some bad news. The good news being that you are no longer injured. The bad news being that the same doesn't not apply to the house. ...You do not have the money to replace doors, but you guess you'll have to figure out how. Still rather out of it, you stroll out of the house, to the front door, and out the gate, still in your pajamas.
You're not sure how long you just stare at the still-standing, unburnt houses and the potholes in the road. All you know is that you're interrupted by the revving of a car blaring <span class="mu-i">Free Bird</span>. The headlights blind you, and then you feel something hit you in the head as one of the passengers yells something incoherent. You glance down. A beer can. It's a beer can.
